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School of Education
2016
Brown Bodies and Xenophobic Bullying in US
Schools: Critical Analysis and Strategies for Action
Monisha Bajaj
University of San Francisco, [email protected]
Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher
Karishma Desai
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Recommended Citation
Monisha Bajaj, Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, and Karishma Desai (2016) Brown Bodies and Xenophobic Bullying in US Schools: Critical
Analysis and Strategies for Action. Harvard Educational Review: Winter 2016, Vol. 86, No. 4, pp. 481-505. https://doi.org/10.17763/
1943-5045-86.4.481
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1
Brown Bodies and Xenophobic Bullying in U.S. Schools:
Critical Analysis and Strategies for Action
By Monisha Bajaj, Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, & Karishma Desai
Abstract:
This essay addresses an evidence-based action project that sought to interrupt and
transform bullying behaviors directed at South Asian American youth in schools in the United
States (U.S.). In the context of this essay and project, the authors argue that larger macro-level
forces that promote misinformation about youth who inhabit brown bodies (in the U.S. and
abroad) have given rise to behaviors identified as bullying, and in some cases, harassment and
hate crimes in schools. Conventional literature on bullying offers inadequate frames for how the
forces of Islamophobia—that affect all those perceived to be Muslim—and bullying come
together to shape realities for youth in schools. This essay advances new frameworks and
strategies for understanding xenophobic and bias-based bullying, and explores schools as sites of
possibility to interrupt Islamophobia and misinformation about South Asian Americans.
Keywords:
Islamophobia, bullying, xenophobia, racism, South Asia, Asian-Americans, critical race theory
2
Introduction
Jajpee, a 17-year-old Sikh American student born and raised in Georgia, has been regularly
bullied since the 2nd grade, from name calling and peer accusations that he has a bomb in his
turban, to physical violence that left him with a broken nose, a chin fracture and bruises all over.
His older sister reported, “He was sitting there with blood all over him and an ice pack in his
hand and kids were telling him ‘go back to your country.’” That particular beating required two
surgeries and when he came back to school, not only did the bullying continue, his sister says the
school did nothing at all to address it. (Lee, 2015)
Khoshnoor came to New York from Pakistan in the 8th grade. She was bullied from the moment
she got to her school: her hijab was constantly pulled off by peers, she was called “stinky,”
“ugly” and “terrorist.” Students would throw things at her, such as balled up pieces of paper
with explicit or lewd comments. Some would even throw basketballs forcefully at her. She
reported these incidents to teachers multiple times, but no one did anything to help. She never
told her mother because she felt it was pointless. (Paracha, 2008)
With countless stories like Jajpee’s and Khoshnoor’s in our consciousness as South Asian
educators in the U.S., we came together after the horrific 2012 shooting by a self-proclaimed
white supremacist at a gurdwara (Sikh temple) in Wisconsin, to discuss how the increasing
instances of Islamophobic violence in and beyond schools might be addressed through curricular
intervention. As education scholars and professionals—for many years, a classroom teacher
(Karishma Desai), an after-school educator and youth development worker (Monisha Bajaj), a
school psychologist (Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher), and all of us researchers of educational
3
phenomena—we had seen how Islamophobia was on the rise in schools, sometimes propagated
by reductive curricula and uninformed teachers (Ghaffar-Kucher, 2012). We also had experience
organizing towards allyship and solidarity, as we believe schools to be sites of possibility (Freire,
1970). In our process of creating a curricular intervention based on extant research, policy
reports and discussions with experts and advocates, we came across hundreds of stories like the
two opening vignettes of xenophobic bullying in schools. The voices and experiences of youth
like Jajpee and Khoshnoor are central to this project and serve as the impetus for creating
curricular resources that expand the empathic frame of who is ‘American,’ ‘human’ and ‘worthy’
of dignity.
Who does and does not belong to the nation are ideas that are sown into schools. Schools
mirror larger forces of exclusion and inequality in society, and this essay focuses on the
consequences of the rise of Islamophobia—the fear or dislike of Islam—in the post September
11, 2001 period (“post-9/11”).1 Specifically, the post-9/11 climate in the U.S. has seen an
increase in violence against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslims, namely, all South
Asians and many other groups as well—a notable addition to the way Islamophobia operates to
the detriment of many beyond those whom discrimination is intended for. Though not a new
phenomenon historically, South Asian Americans (who number 3.4 million in the U.S.) have
been targets of hate crimes, harassment and school-based bullying and violence in increasing
numbers since 2001.
We are grateful to Samip Mallick, director of SAADA and Deepa Iyer, former director of SAALT for their
partnership in creating the resource pack we discuss in this piece. We also thank Lesley Bartlett for her important
feedback on drafts of this essay.
1
Following the Runnymede Trust Commission (2005) in the United Kingdom, we agree that, in fact, there are a
multitude of “Islamophobias” rather than a single phenomenon, “each version of Islamophobia has its own features
as well as similarities with, and borrowings from, other versions” (p. 2). In this article, we focus on how the forms of
Islamophobia directed at those perceived to be Muslim operate in and around schools.
4
In this essay, we seek to demonstrate how macro-level institutional forces [e.g. the
globalization of Islamophobia in political and media discourse (Rana, 2011), and U.S. military
engagement in Muslim-majority lands abroad], when coupled with meso-level factors (e.g.,
poorly developed curricula and inadequate teacher professional development), spawn micro-level
expressions of bias among peers and teachers, creating a hostile climate for any youth perceived
to be Muslim. Unlike conventional scholarship on bullying, we draw a direct link from the micro
to the macro, asserting that larger social and political forces that promote one-sided, singular
narratives about wars overseas (e.g., the namelessness of citizens of other nations killed by
drones), have given rise to the construction of those people of brown skin as “Other,” “terrorist”
and “enemy.” In U.S. schools, this is manifested through a range of behaviors that we identify as
bullying, and in some cases, harassment, abuse and hate crimes.
The literature on bullying mentions in passing bullying based on race or religion, but is
often silent about how the forces of xenophobia and racism come together to shape realities for
youth in schools. Particularly absent from bullying literature is how misinformation and
ignorance—fueled by discourses of national security—can be propagated by teachers, school
staff and other families, rendering the bullying of South Asian American youth either invisible or
deemed unworthy of action. Utilizing insights from critical race theory by exploring the
intersections of racism, xenophobia and bullying offers a clearer picture of where and how this
project sought to intervene in addressing the realities of South Asian American youth in U.S.
schools. We posit that because schools are, in many ways, a microcosm of society and reflect the
prevailing socio-political climate, greater attention is warranted to understand how xenophobia
and contemporary racism significantly inflect youth experiences of bullying in schools.
5
In what follows, we first describe the impetus for our project rooted in our lived
experiences and pedagogical commitments. We then describe how conventional bullying
literature overlooks the particularities of xenophobic bullying. Next, we discuss how we utilized
key insights from a structural and historical analysis of racism and Islamophobia as it plays out
in educational settings to develop an intervention that sought to address the roots of such
bullying rather than solely the symptoms. Subsequently, we discuss the curriculum itself,
including the strengths and shortcomings of the project, and offer an invitation to educators to
join us in conversation about addressing xenophobic bullying through engagement with the
curricular resource. Finally, we provide concluding thoughts on the project vis-à-vis larger issues
of belonging, citizenship and inclusion in U.S. schools.
Attending to the three levels we introduce in this essay to the literature on bullying, from
the macro-level, we trace the circulation of Islamophobic discourses (Rana, 2011) to the microlevel, exemplified through acts of xenophobic bullying in schools. We pay attention to the mesolevel of intermediation by teachers often providing a null or hidden curriculum (Flinders et al.,
1986) that supports such xenophobia. We then discuss our action-based curricular project
developed to respond to this increase in bullying of South Asian American youth.2 This
intervention sought to catalyze the potential of the meso-level to serve as a space to rethink
epistemological assumptions about South Asians in the U.S., to cultivate empathy and to build
solidarity; we also sought to enhance and encourage teacher agency in interrupting Islamophobic
discourses in schools and communities. This project can inform others who seek to examine how
2
Despite some accounts that bullying behavior is actually decreasing in schools, our study finds that xenophobic
and race-based bullying behavior is actually on the rise. There is a central tension in the data vis-à-vis reports of
bullying versus actual bullying that skews our understanding of whether occurrences are actually increasing in
frequency, or have remained consistent and more awareness is resulting in greater instances of reporting bullying.
6
larger structural forms of bias manifest in and around schools through bullying, and can also
serve as an example of engaged scholarship where resources and tools from the academy are
paired with community needs: in this case, to produce an evidence-based curricular resource
packet to interrupt xenophobic bullying.
Our Starting Point
Defining Terms
The Islamophobic tenor that prevails at all levels (global, national and local) converges to
create a hostile environment for youth with “brown bodies” (Rana, 2011). We understand the
risk of a potentially essentialist term such as “brown bodies.”3 However, it encapsulates the
perception of foreignness and illegality post-9/11 that has marked many groups—South Asian,
West Asian,4 North African and various other communities of color [e.g., there was at least one
case of a Native American woman who was killed in a post-9/11 hate crime in 2001 (Maira,
2009)]. There is also an increasing discourse of the U.S.-Mexico border as a site for terrorist
activity that has since colored debates on immigration (Rivera, 2014). Rivera terms this
conflation by the media and government policy of Muslims and Latinx5 as dangerous, the
“brown threat.” Thus, we use the term “brown bodies” as a signifier of how “foreign-ness” is
mapped onto particular communities, and reconstructed in classrooms, communities and the
media as threatening, and how xenophobic bullying and harassment has psychological and
corporeal impacts on the bodies of young people.
We have not utilized the term ‘brown bodies’ in the curricular packet for educators and students because of the
complex ways it might be understood.
3
4
We prefer the term “West Asia” to “Middle East” given the colonial origins of the latter.
The term “Latinx” encompasses men, women and gender non-conforming individuals with Latin American
heritage.
5
7
While the phenomena we discuss affect many communities, we decided to focus on
South Asian Americans for this curricular project given the community partnerships we
developed and the gap in resources providing information to and about this community. South
Asian Americans—whose families (perhaps many generations ago) originally hail from the
countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka—have diverse religious backgrounds, including Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Christian,
Jewish, Buddhist, Baha’i and Zoroastrian (SAALT, 2012). Mainstream U.S. media and larger
xenophobic discourses often flatten and elide the diversity among this population and present all
members of this group as newcomers with “funny” accents. In fact, South Asian migration to the
U.S. is not a new phenomenon at all: it started as early as the 1700s, but increased drastically
after the immigration reforms of 1965 spurred by the Civil Rights movement’s attention to unfair
restrictions and quotas on migration from non-European countries (Prashad, 2005). From 2000 to
2010, South Asian Americans were the fastest growing major ethnic group according to the U.S.
Census and now comprise more than one percent of the U.S. population (SAALT, 2012).
Our Voices and Positionalities
In our approach to this project, we reflected that our experiences as educators, researchers
and students (in the U.S, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan and Germany) positioned schools as sites
of, at times, perilous attitudes and behaviors, and at other times, possibility, hope and
transformative learning. The three authors knew each other from our affiliation to Teachers
College, Columbia University: Monisha Bajaj as a professor there at the time this project was
initiated, Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher as a graduate of the doctoral program and Karishma Desai as
a doctoral student. As South Asians in the U.S., we also had different vantage points: Bajaj, a
8
second generation Indian-American who grew up on the West Coast with Sikh and Hindu
heritage; Ghaffar-Kucher, a Pakistani Muslim who migrated to the U.S. for graduate studies, and
who had previously lived in Asia and Europe; and Desai, a second-generation Indian-American
raised in a large Hindu Gujarati community in the Midwest. Our intersecting experiences, as
described below, shape how we came to the project, and detail the work we carried out as a team.
Below, we each briefly shift into first person to underscore our individual narratives and
investments in the project.
Monisha Bajaj: I moved to New York City two weeks before September 11, 2001. As the
horrific events of 9/11 were unfolding, I found myself volunteering at the armory where services
were being centralized: ‘missing’ posters lined the fences, donations poured in that we volunteers
helped sort and family members (like the Urdu, Hindi and Bengali-speaking ones I clumsily
helped translate for with my limited proficiency) were bringing in items with DNA— like
toothbrushes and combs—to match with the body parts recovery workers were finding in the
rubble to give closure to loved ones. A few months later in 2002, I began partnering with an
organization for South Asian workers based in Queens. During this time, post-9/11 policy
shifts—like the draconian “special registration” process for men from Muslim-majority
countries—broke up thousands of families through massive round-ups and deportations. The
multi-ethnic and diverse experiences of New Yorkers were slowly being erased and manipulated
for political purposes to justify military actions abroad and enact legislation at home that eroded
civil liberties.
Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher: I arrived in the U.S. a year before 9/11 to begin my graduate
studies. Prior to that, I had lived in Hong Kong, Pakistan and Germany. Though race and racism
had played a role in my everyday lived experiences (particularly in Hong Kong), nothing
9
prepared me for the racism in the post-9/11 period. Though Muslims had always been viewed
with some trepidation in the U.S., attitudes towards Muslims (and brown people more generally)
drastically changed almost overnight. Determined to learn more about the Muslim American
experience, I began conducting research with South Asian and Muslim youth, working in
particular with Pakistani high school youth in New York. Through their stories, I learned of the
mundane micro-aggressions and outright racism that seem to color their everyday educational
experiences.
Karishma Desai: My story is a reflection of the kinds of experiences that many South
Asian American children endure in which I experienced frequent encounters of otherness.
Despite my attempts to escape her lemon-colored comb every morning, my mother would
insistently secure my shoulders in-between her knees, and braid my hair tight with coconut and
bhringraj oil, repeating its countless benefits. Before leaving for school, I would sneak into the
bathroom and quickly dab off as much oil as I possibly could from my scalp. And every
morning, Jeff who sat behind me in Mrs. Cheney’s third grade class would declare that my
efforts had failed, “Ewww! What is that smell?” he would loudly whisper to his friend Matt
behind him. At recess, Jeff and Matt would chase Ekta and I yelling, “Hindu dot! Hindu dot!
Hindu dot!” They had made it their job to point out my differences, and mark my foreignness.
Although I attended elementary school in one of the most multi-ethnic districts in the country, I
frequently experienced xenophobic bullying. The lingering shame oriented my curriculum and
pedagogical commitments later as a classroom teacher.
Monisha Bajaj: I initiated our team coming together in 2012 after the tragedy in Oak
Creek, Wisconsin. The thought of immigrant communities seeking solace in worship at a Sikh
temple, not unlike the one in California that I attended as a child, only to be gunned down by a
10
self-proclaimed white supremacist targeting those whom he perceived to be Muslims, was
terrifying and heartbreaking. The starting point of this project was thus the desire to interrupt
hate despite the many directions that it flows. We knew that seeds of this xenophobic racism
were either being planted in schools or ignored as they continued to be nurtured by extremist
forces, impacting the everyday experiences of ‘brown’ children and youth.
In designing the curriculum, we considered what we wanted educators and learners to
take away. Two enduring understandings especially compelled us: 1) xenophobic racism against
South Asians in America has a long history that manifests in micro-aggressions, bullying and
hate crimes; and 2) our migration stories as Americans have common themes and struggles
(despite racialized differences), and, when we are aware of these historic commonalities, we can
develop greater empathy and the capacity to become allies. As South Asian Americans, our
positioning as model minorities (Iyer, 2015; Prashad, 2005) has sometimes obscured the
insidious visceral effects/affects of historical and present day manifestations of xenophobic
racism.
Taken together, our personal experiences and commitments form the basis for this project
guiding our analysis and engagement with existing resources and scholarship to our development
of the curricular resource packet as an intervention to promote greater awareness, understanding
and solidarity.
From Macro to Micro: Where Xenophobia meets School Bullying
Current literature on bullying frames it as primarily an inter-personal phenomenon and
one that can be corrected through behavioral approaches (Olweus, 1994; Sharp & Smith, 2002).
In the U.S., nearly 20 percent of elementary school children report being bullied with numbers
11
declining to about 10 percent of youth in high school (Luxenberg et al, 2014). Bullying behavior
has been defined as repeated and intentional abuse in a social or institutional setting. It can
create or result from imbalances of power, and manifests differently in distinct social and
cultural contexts (Sharp & Smith, 2002). The most common discourses about bullying in the
United States delineate between the “bully,” “the bullied” and “bystanders” (Olweus, 1994), with
some intervention efforts seeking to cultivate “upstanders” who serve as allies (Facing History &
Ourselves, n.d.).
Much of this literature has been influenced by psychological approaches (Olweus, 1993),
treating bullying as individual (albeit often horrific) acts to be stopped through greater oversight
and zero-tolerance policies (Stein, 2007). Conventional bullying literature and interventions
neither consider how larger discourses, media narratives and discriminatory policies shape
actions, nor consider extensively the role of teachers and schools in perpetuating or permitting
bullying. Further, there is little mention of macro-level or structural forces, such as racism or
Islamophobia, in scholarship or policy documents on bullying.
Bullying in schools often reflects social dynamics and bias embedded in sociocultural
contexts within which schools are situated. All forms of bias-based bullying broadly, and
xenophobic bullying specifically, we assert, require attention to the micro-, meso- and macrolevels to adequately understand its causes, dimensions of its occurrence and to effectively design
strategies to counter it.
12
Figure 1: Levels of Analysis to Understand Xenophobic Bullying
Macro-Level:
Media, Foreign &
Domestic Policy,
Historic Xenophobia
Meso-Level:
Schools as Sites of
Both Potential Peril
and Possibility
Micro-Level:
Instances of Bullying,
Hate Crimes,
Harassment, Abuse
As mentioned in the introduction, our rationale for addressing the xenophobic bullying of
South Asian American youth stemmed from its increasing incidence: more than half of all Asian
American youth report being bullied (Hong, 2013), the highest percentage of any ethnic group
surveyed, with even higher numbers for South Asian American youth [up to 75 percent (Coker,
2013)]. The majority of Sikh young men reported being harassed, taunted or intimidated because
they wear a turban—a noticeable signifier of difference. These young men are often believed to
be Muslim and their harassment exemplifies the pervasive Islamophobia and xenophobia
targeting youth from South Asian communities, irrespective of their actual religious background.
Prevailing Islamophobia across the U.S., facilitated by one-sided media narratives,
extensive surveillance of Muslim communities (Ali, 2014) and misinformation about Muslim
populations, have resulted in a significant increase of bullying against South Asian American
youth from a variety of religious, national and ethnic backgrounds (Coker, 2013; Sacirbey,
13
2013). This is evidenced not only by numerous stories in the media,6 but also data collected by
advocacy groups and think tanks such as South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT),
the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Institute for Social Policy and
Understanding (ISPU), as well as documented in scholarly research (see Ahmad & Szpara, 2003;
Ali, 2014; Ghaffar-Kucher, 2012; Sirin & Fine, 2008). A report by ISPU suggests that Muslim
American children and youth are bullied for reasons that are not typical (e.g., physical
appearance, ability level and popularity), but because of their ethnicity and religion and the belief
that they pose a threat to the “American way of life” (Britto, 2011).
Situating Islamophobia at the Macro-Level
The construction of Muslims in the Western imagination has been a historically racialized
process – the assumption being that Muslims come from the “orient” and are typically brown
skinned. Junaid Rana (2011) links the “moral panic” after 9/11 vis-à-vis populations of South
and West Asian descent to the xenophobic discourses and policies of decades past, terming it an
“Islamic peril.” Drawing on critical race theory, he discusses how fear and insecurity, coupled
with media representations and restrictive policies, have advanced the “consolidation of a
Muslim racial formation post–9/11” that conflates “Arabs and South Asians…into the racial
figure of the Muslim” (p. 93). Signifiers of this “racial figure of the Muslim” include brown skin,
turbans, hijabs, accents and beards, underscored by mainstream perceptions of illegality and
foreign-ness (Rana, 2011).
We find this concept of ‘racialized Muslim’ useful to our project because it supports our
At the time of writing this essay, the 2016 presidential race with some candidates’ controversial positions about
banning Muslim migration had led to an exponential increase in bullying, hate talk and hate crimes against Muslims
and those perceived to be Muslim.
6
14
argument that those perceived to be Muslim are unified by this form of xenophobia in terms of
the violence directed at them. In only two months after the tragic 9/11 attacks, thousands of
people were assaulted, 19 killed, including South Asians, Arabs, Latinx, Native Americans and
others with ‘‘Muslim-like’’ features (Grewal, as cited in Rana 2011, p. 51). From 2001 to the
present, hate crimes have ‘skyrocketed’ against anyone perceived to be Muslim, though these are
usually documented and responded to by specific communities rather than uniting among groups
that are affected by Islamophobia.
Contemporary violence (inclusive of bullying) and insecurity comes from the
juxtaposition of racism, neoliberalism and neo-imperial wars, and these feelings are felt within
realms of social life that seem unrelated to state power (Grewal, 2014). The terrain of America’s
War on Terror is infused with cultural constructions such as “terrorist threats” and “alien
civilization,” that legitimate racial profiling policies which target populations based on U.S.
foreign policy anxieties (Maira, 2009). These constructions are related to cultural citizenship
(Ong, 1996) and the perception that Muslims are pre-modern, anti-democratic and, therefore, a
threat to liberal Western society (Ali, 2014) and ideals of humanness (Asad, 2015).
Per Rana (2011) and other scholars (Abu El-Haj, 2015; Maira, 2009), we identified three
larger tropes shared between historical forms of xenophobia and present-day discourses of
unequal citizenship/humanity that construct macro-level discourses of Islamophobia. The first
trope draws on Rana’s notion of ‘Islamic peril’ that produces fear and a sense of insecurity when
around individuals perceived to be Muslim. For example, the regular accounts of brown-bodied
individuals being removed from planes for speaking Arabic,7 wearing a t-shirt with Arabic
7
The Daily Beast. (Producer). (2015, January 10). Arabic Speaking Men Barred From Flight. Retrieved from
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/11/20/philly-men-pulled-off-flight-for-speaking-arabic.html
15
letters,8 or carrying a breast-pump perceived to be a bomb,9 highlight the routine everyday
interactions that render brown bodies dangerous.
The second trope, which has deep historical roots as well, is that of a ‘clash of
civilizations’ (see the misguided and arguably xenophobic work by Samuel Huntington, 1996).
The supposed Christian nature of the U.S.—asserted particularly by those on the political right—
is often highlighted as a form of incompatibility with Americans of other faiths, despite the fact
that Muslims have been in the U.S. from its genesis as a nation (Ghaneabassir, 2010).
The third trope that contributes to a larger climate of Islamophobia is that of ‘perpetual
foreign-ness’ (Maira, 2009). No matter the length of time individuals and families have resided
in the U.S., they are perceived to be foreign, dangerous and unaccepting of American values.
These larger tropes influence the milieu in which schools operate, particularly when lessons in
critical media literacy and historical information that attends to geopolitics are notably absent.
We argue that the particular brand of xenophobic bullying our curriculum seeks to
address results from larger historical and institutional forces that accentuate these problematic
tropes. These tropes are continuations of colonial discourses that have been exacerbated in the
post-9/11 period in which anyone perceived to be Muslim is seen as a threat to security. Thus,
we believe that it is important to re-center a structural lens—one that conventional literature on
bullying has neglected to employ—that allows more nuanced analyses of individual expressions
of bias, as the next section outlines.
8
BBC (Producer). (2006, January 5). Arabic T-shirt sparks airport row. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5297822.stm
RT. (2015). Suspicious threat: Sikh woman’s breast pump causes terror alert before Delta flight.
https://www.rt.com/usa/324687-sikh-mother-flight-terror-alert/
9
16
The Curriculum Development Process: Understanding Islamophobia at the Micro-Level
In seeking evidence for our curricular intervention, we reviewed scholarship on the
experiences of youth from various backgrounds targeted by xenophobic bullying (rooted in
Islamophobia, whether or not the victims were Muslims); drew from our own experience as
educational scholars and practitioners; and interviewed researchers who worked in this area.
While traditional bullying scholarship distinguishes between physical, verbal, social/emotional
and cyber forms of bullying (Olweus, 1993), we found that when the bullying target was
perceived to be Muslim, the types of behaviors (while accompanying all the forms above) took
on particular dimensions that followed along the three larger tropes we identified earlier:
‘Islamic peril,’ ‘clash of civilizations’ and ‘perpetual foreigner.’ Additionally, traditional
bullying literature posits that such behaviors happen between peers and can be interrupted by
student mediators or ‘upstanders’ who speak up. Here, we found a troubling trend: many of the
instances of bullying experienced happened with the knowledge of teachers or with them
participating in some cases.
Based on our review of dozens of incidents, we found several types of xenophobic
bullying that South Asian American youth repeatedly experience that are all integrally linked to
the three tropes introduced earlier.10 First, name -calling and verbal bullying is a common form
of bullying in conventional scholarship, but takes on a unique form when the targets are assumed
to be Muslim, such as being called a “terrorist,” “raghead,” “diaperhead,” or “towelhead” and
being threatened with nativist violence. A second domain of xenophobic bullying includes
10
To develop these domains, we culled examples of xenophobic bullying from reports, websites, talking with
researchers about their work whenever possible (e.g., Ghaffar-Kucher, 2012; Maira, 2009; Subramanian, 2014), our
own observations as educators and policy documents; we then sat together to categorize the domains under which
incidents fell. We subsequently delineated the historical and macro-level frames that outlined the context in which
xenophobic bullying takes place, identifying tropes that shaped South Asian youths’ experiences of bullying.
17
physical assaults and intimidation; regular incidents included taunting, violently removing hijabs
or turbans (in some cases setting them on fire), forcibly cutting someone’s hair off, and other
physical assaults. The third domain could include verbal or physical forms of bullying, but had a
specific religious-based character: youth reported bullying behaviors directed at them indicating
that non-Christians are going to hell, that they believe in false Gods, they cannot be American if
they are not Christian, ridicule of their religions and defilement of religious objects. We
identified a fourth domain of xenophobic bullying that included attacks on families and
communities, differing from conventional bullying scholarship that often only focuses on
schools. Routine examples of bullying in this domain included statements such as “go back
where you came from”; physical damage to property (throwing of eggs, lighting fires,
vandalism/graffiti with derogatory statements); attacks at school on students’ property, and also
on their homes and places of worship. The last domain of xenophobic bullying that we identified
related to ridicule and taunting based on the types of foods students ate, their appearance, and
how they dressed or smelled. By analyzing actual incidents and understanding the trends and
domains in which youth experienced bullying, we were able to ground our curriculum in real-life
incidents—or experiential knowledge, as critical race theorists of education have advocated
(Yosso et al., 2001).
Through mapping larger understandings of bullying onto the types of racialized incidents
that brown-bodied South Asian Americans routinely face, these domains above informed the
curricular intervention we developed by focusing on the most common forms of bullying and
harassment faced by South Asian American children and youth. While conventional bullying
literature proved insufficient for our project, we did resonate with its belief that educators,
parents and communities can play an important role in intervening and preventing bullying
18
through the creation of safe school environments (Olweus, 1993; Wang et al., 2009). Thus, this
project considered schools as not only potential sites of misinformation, but also possible sites of
transformation.
Figure 2: Intersections of those Commonly Affected by Islamophobia in the U.S.11
People of
West Asian
Descent
Muslims
People of
South Asian
Descent
In our process, we underwent various stages that were overlapping and complementary.
We did a comprehensive review of existing documents to create the domains that we discuss
above. We also drew key insights from critical race theory in education for our curriculum,
namely: (1) understanding the permanent centrality of race and racism and its structural nature in
the U.S. at all levels (Bell, as cited in Yosso et al., 2001, p. 91); (2) incorporating the use of
storytelling and experiential knowledge (woven throughout the lessons) as curricular resource;
(3) “envision[ing] social justice as the struggle to eliminate racism and other forms of
subordination while empowering groups that have been subordinated” (Solórzano and Delgado
Bernal, 2001, p. 91); and (4) linking the micro-, meso- and macro-levels in understanding the
According to latest Census figures available, people of West Asian (the census uses the term “Middle Eastern”)
descent total about 2.5 million; Muslim Americans 3.3 million; and people of South Asian heritage 3.4 million, with
important overlaps between these groups in terms of national origins and religions.
11
19
complex ways that racialized discourses are deployed, lived, resisted and transformed in and
around schools (Abu El-Haj, 2015; Taylor, Gillborn & Ladson-Billings, 2009).
The ‘social justice imperative’ of critical race analyses of education (Solorzano &
Delgado Bernal, 2001) led us to seek out community partners, such as the New York City-based
non-profit, SAYA (South Asian Youth Action), and the national advocacy network, South Asian
Americans Leading Together (SAALT). SAALT partnered with us to broaden the distribution of
the curriculum and to enable the input of advocates addressing issues facing South Asian
Americans. We also drew extensively from SAALT reports and training materials utilized with
college-level students.
In the curriculum, we also highlight historical forms of xenophobia as an antecedent to
current forms of Islamophobia. To that end, we approached the South Asian American Digital
Archive (SAADA) and received permission to use images in our lessons they had been
compiling to offer primary sources to link students to the lived experiences of South Asian
immigrants and historical racialized constructions from the 1700s to the present-day.
Working in tandem with educators, activists, advocates and community members, the
final product, a 90-page open-access curricular resource pack, offers educators resources for
addressing xenophobic bullying and racism directed at youth of South Asian descent in U.S.
schools.
Curriculum as Intervention: Mediating Islamophobia at the Meso-Level
In this section we argue that the normalization of xenophobic bullying is based on ideas
of which bodies are seen as fully human and which bodies are seen as sub-human (Butler, 2004;
Weheliye, 2014; Asad, 2015). We offer the curriculum as an intervention to counter this by
20
historicizing this specific form of bullying and engendering spaces of interconnectedness and
thereby humanizing the “Other.” As mentioned earlier, race has been a dominant marker of
South Asian, West Asian and Muslim “Otherness,” and these racist portrayals have persisted
since colonial times (Prashad, 2005; Said, 1994). South Asian American youth become objects of
bullying and violence because their racialized brown bodies are perceived as threats. In seeking
to strengthen the empathic capacity of students, educators and schools, we also had to extend the
frame of who is regarded as “American” and “human.” The bullying we seek to counter through
this curricular intervention is a part of, and rooted in this process that defines and delimits who is
fully human. Anchored in a larger narrative, xenophobic racist bullying underscores the
disposability and precarious status of certain lives (Butler, 2004).
In what follows, we describe the curriculum and explain how this intervention seeks to
counter the tropes presented earlier and the idea that some have full-human status and others do
not through learning opportunities that offer common ground and enable students to make
connections between migration stories, develop empathy and act as allies.
The Curriculum
Educators, while sometimes part of reproducing dominant narratives of xenophobia and
bias in schools, often seek ways to intervene when they see situations of bullying or injustices in
their schools. This curricular packet sought to offer educators and school staff with resources and
tools to start conversations, support targeted students in locating themselves and their histories in
the U.S. and foster understanding and awareness in school communities about fellow students
who are perceived to be “brown threats” (Rivera, 2014) rather than peers of equal value. We
acknowledge that educators concerned with social justice may be more likely to gravitate
towards such a curriculum, as may educators who work with South Asian students. As such, this
21
curriculum presupposes that the classrooms it will be utilized in have some contact with or
familiarity with South Asian American communities: census data reveals that South Asians have
settled in all 50 states, with significant populations in Northern and Southern California, the tristate New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area, and the Washington, DC, Chicago, Detroit and
Houston metropolitan areas (SAALT, 2012).
Given the rising and persistent cases of Islamophobia manifested through xenophobic
bullying in schools, we also felt a sense of urgency since schools are the third most common site
for the perpetuation of hate crimes in the U.S. (Greene et al., 2013). We sought to equip
educators with resources and tools to create awareness and prevent instances of bullying and
intimidation—whether from peers or teachers. Insights from critical race theorists in education
informed our design and implementation of the curriculum by historicizing issues of xenophobia;
we also used real events in role-play or case study scenarios with the aim of building awareness,
recognition (for those who may be undergoing similar acts of bullying) and
empathy/understanding.
The curricular resource packet consists of an introductory note for educators, six lessons
and an extensive list of further activities and resources which offers educators an entry point to
talk about bullying, harassment, hate and violence. In Table One, we outline the lesson sequence
including the activities included (all were participatory and interactive in nature). Several of the
lessons drew on insights from critical race theory in education; for example, lessons one and five
posit race and racism as central frames for understanding the South Asian immigrant experience,
while lessons two, four, and six incorporate the use of counter-stories that seek to spark
solidarity and a commitment to social justice. All of the lessons and the curricular pack as a
whole draw from critical race analyses by historicizing xenophobia and not presenting it as
22
merely a post-9/11 phenomenon, but rather one with deep roots and diverse manifestations from
the 1700s forward.
Educative Goal
Everyone’s Migration Story
Activities:
1. Mapping migration stories
2. Timeline of Key Moments in U.S.
migration of various groups
Place xenophobia in historical perspective.
Expand frame of “American” by examining
migration more broadly, including learners’
families.
Bullying Intersections
Activities:
1. Discussion of Bullying broadly
2. Real life Xenophobic Bullying Examples
Role Play
Build empathy by providing information
about xenophobic bullying experienced.
Develop capacity to identify bullying
incidents.
Building Empathy
Activities:
1. Learn about Oak Creek, Wisconsin
Shooting, read testimonies of survivors
2. Write letter to survivors of the tragedy
Lesson Five
Lesson Two
Historicize South Asian presence in the U.S.
from the 1800s onward.
Introduce key terminology about
Islamophobia, xenophobia & bullying.
Lesson Three
Topic
South Asians in the United States
Activities:
1. Timeline of Images & Facts about South
Asians in the U.S.
2. Glossary Activity with key terms and
definitions
Lesson Four
Lesson One
Table One: Table of Contents for Resource Pack
The Racialization of South Asians, Past
and Present
Activities:
1. Examine images and texts of xenophobic
incidents from 1907 to the present
2. Link past forms of xenophobia to the
present
Build knowledge about the dangers of
Islamophobic attitudes.
Foster solidarity with victims of violence.
Address roots of xenophobia and place it in
historical perspective.
Foster knowledge, empathy & solidarity;
ability to identity xenophobic attitudes & acts.
23
Lesson Six
From Bystander to Ally
Activities:
1. Role play to practice being an ally in the
face of xenophobic violence.
2. Explore Islamophobic cyberbullying.
Develop capacities of allies to interrupt
xenophobia.
Practice skills and behaviors for engaging
with difference.
The resource packet had objectives that could have extended beyond six lessons, as noted
by the expansive educative goals in Table One. The curricular intervention intended to provide
information about the diversity of South Asians and their experiences in the U.S., and to unsettle
three misconceptions contained in the larger Islamophobic tropes discussed earlier in the essay:
Islamic peril, the clash of civilizations and the perpetual foreigner. First, the trope of Islamic
peril positions individuals with brown skin as enemies of the state that produce fear and
insecurity. Our lessons (specifically #1 and #3) counter this by explicitly defining and
problematizing xenophobic bullying. The lessons also highlight deep civic engagement in the
U.S. by South Asian Americans to counter this narrative of ‘foreign enemy’ and ‘threat’
(notably, we include information about the first U.S. Congressperson of Asian descent who was
a Sikh immigrant, Dilip Singh Saund, elected in 1957 in California). The tropes of the clash of
civilizations and perpetual foreigner, while the root of much violence, are sadly, not new. A core
goal of the curricular packet was to historicize discrimination against South Asians as not just a
post-9/11 phenomenon, but one that has existed since the 18th century when immigrants from
South Asia first arrived, though perhaps more visible now with new ways of sharing information.
The lessons together sought to provide historical information about the lived realities of
immigrants past and present. Furthermore, by asking prospective learners to attend to their own
family’s migration stories, we sought to destabilize the attachment of foreignness with brown
24
bodies. For example, lesson two underscores how the social racial formation in the U.S. has
shifted over time marking different communities as ‘alien’ and undesirable.
The use of primary sources allowed us to provide learners with a glimpse into actual
examples of xenophobia. For example, in lesson five, the following image (Figure Three) and an
excerpt from the newspaper enable students to historicize xenophobia against South Asians.
Historical “Othering” is thus juxtaposed with present day xenophobia folded into bullying acts
and language illustrating the commonalities in these violent narratives. The article describes
how, in response to a “tide of turbans” and “dusky Orientals,” a nativist mob violently attacked
South Asian millworkers and their families in Washington state driving them out of town. The
newspaper editorial notes the horrific violence, but concluded that, “the departure of the Hindus
[outdated term for all South Asians] will leave no regret.” It further states, “they are repulsive in
appearance and disgusting in their manners… The Hindu is a detriment to the town” (Seattle
Civil Rights & Labor History Project, n.d.).
25
Figure 3: Newspaper Article from September 1907 on Bellingham Riots
After analyzing the newspaper image and editorial from 1907, lesson six asks students to
explore present-day examples of cyber-bullying drawing on the historical information,
definitional understandings of Islamophobia and xenophobia and information about what being
an ally means.
26
Figure 4: Excerpt from Lesson Six
(image created by the authors using real life examples that emerged during our background
research)
By moving between past and present, macro to micro, we sought to offer students and
teachers—given many reports of their role in allowing or participating in forms of xenophobic
bullying—a complex yet accessible introduction to the ways in which xenophobia plays out and
can be countered in schools. The links between blatantly racist historical events and everyday
practices offers students a chance to make connections, engage in critical media literacy and
develop an understanding of experiences of targeted students (or recognize such bullying as
27
abusive in the case of students experiencing it). The six lessons and further resources worked
together to offer many points of entry and new information to teachers and students.
Reflections
The intention of the curriculum was to address xenophobic bullying by unsettling the tropes
of Islamic peril, clash of civilizations and perpetual foreigner, and enriching students and
teachers’ limited knowledge of South Asian Americans. To do this, we designed the following
essential questions to frame and anchor our curricular intervention:

How does understanding historical narratives of South Asia and South Asian American
history lead us to comprehend, unpack and undo current views and forms of xenophobic
racism?

How do deeper understandings of complex and diverse community and individual
histories help us build empathy and act as allies?

How do we build more inclusive schools and communities?
The lessons were crafted with the hope that educators and students would begin to grapple with
these questions, and move beyond mainstream discourses often embedded in school-based
instruction, examine new perspectives and question dominant assumptions. Certainly, the
curriculum complicates and disrupts the construction of contemporary Islamophobia as it moves
through historical timelines, shared migration narratives, stories of xenophobic bullying and
comparative explorations of targeted racism across time periods.
However, lessons about historical and contemporary global geopolitics would have
furthered our goal of deconstructing Islamophobia. Educators and students might understand the
reasoning that infuses these problematic discourses with added curricular material that teaches
analyses of the historic construction of the “racialized Muslim” (Rana, 2011) and present-day
28
reconfigurations of these colonial tropes. Lessons could have also furthered a better
understanding of contemporary global conditions such as the international war on terror that
produces Islamophobia.
We recognize the limits and uncertainties of the ambitions embedded in the essential
questions that drive this curriculum. We hope that historicizing both the migration of South
Asian Americans as well as the configuration of these bodies as threatening and feared “Others”
in the mainstream imaginary will complicate constructions held by educators and students. Yet,
this same historical condition informs the deep-rootedness of normalized ideas of “Otherness” in
the national consciousness. Secondly, while we see empathy as a productive feeling with the
potential to support student understandings of the precarities faced by children that encounter
xenophobic bullying, education scholars have recognized the limitations of empathy in social
justice curriculum (Boler, 1997). For instance, Megan Boler (1997) illustrates how the desire to
generate empathy or full identification with the other in multicultural curriculum often maintains
passivity and fails to interrogate relationships of power. Two particular moments in our lessons
seek to build empathy explicitly: a lesson on shared migration histories and a lesson that asks
students to engage the testimony of Harpreet Singh Saini who lost his mother in the Oak Creek
tragedy. The lesson on migration histories considers historical context and asks students to
engage their own assumptions regarding “Who is an American?” and thereby seeks to attend to
power dynamics. To further students’ critical reflection on their own positionality in the present
condition, we could integrate provocative and risky questions to guide the reflective letter in
response to Harpreet’s testimony. This might produce what Boler (1997) calls a “testimonial
reading” that implicates the reader (Boler, 1997, p. 263).
However, given that this open-access document may be picked up and utilized without
29
much training or particular background in critical pedagogies, we made a decision to make the
lessons as accessible as possible for interested educators. We thus also recognize the limitations
of this and any curricular intervention in addressing macro level discourses, policies and
historical conditions. At the same time, we see the potential – unsettling normalized notions
might alter the ways in which the teachers and students affected by the curriculum engage with
communities attached to these markers of difference and how they consume biased media
discourses and images.
Moreover, the curriculum would have benefitted from pilot lessons and ongoing
discussions with students and educators during the time of its development. We had more
flexibility and ability to partner with community groups than most educators do when creating
curriculum given our position in the academy that facilitated such relationships; that said, with
more time and planning, we could have engaged classroom teachers and students more in the
process, and piloted the curriculum in multiple sites, evaluating the implementation and revising
the curricular resource accordingly. Greater input would have allowed us to provide suggestions
on how to map this curriculum onto teachers’ plans, specifically where in the curricular sequence
such lessons, in whole or in part, might fit. While different mandates regulate teacher curriculum,
such guidance would make the incorporation of this curriculum more feasible beyond the brief
mention we provide in the curricular resource pack of how it aligns with Common Core
standards (p. 5). As it stands, the curricular packet is our ‘first-cut’ at information and
understandings we believe could begin to destabilize Islamophobic sentiments and promote
greater empathy, but such an assertion has not yet been explored in practice. Given that the
curriculum is largely a yet-untested innovation, this essay serves as an invitation for others to
30
engage with it, assess its impact, join in conversation discussion and suggest additions and
modifications to the curriculum.
Since the curricular resource was launched in April 2013, it has been disseminated widely
to educators, activists and policymakers. Through our own networks and contacts as well as
those of the partners on this project (SAALT primarily), youth training programs for South Asian
Americans have used the curriculum, it has been introduced as a text in teacher education
courses (at City College of New York, New York University, the University of MassachusettsAmherst, among others), and has been circulated to teachers across the U.S. and Canada. In May
2013, SAALT worked with Representative Mike Honda, a Democrat from California who chairs
the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus, to circulate the curriculum with a cover note about the
importance of addressing bullying to his hundreds of fellow representatives in the U.S. Congress.
The entire curriculum is online and freely accessible to any individual or group that seeks to use
it in part or whole.12
Our team has conducted several workshops and trainings for educators and policymakers
at different venues, including South Asian American advocacy meetings and several teacher
educator conferences. In these workshops, we provide an overview of the rationale for the
curriculum, examples of xenophobic bullying and then walk participants through a sample
activity or two from the curriculum. Many participants have responded that it was powerful to
learn about real-life examples of bullying as well as strategies to interrupt such practices. The
next steps for this project would be to study any impact—intended or unintended—of the
curriculum and engage in further teacher professional development.
12
See http://saalt.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/In-the-Face-of-Xenophobia.pdf
31
Discussion & Concluding Thoughts
Through this project, we sought to ‘speak back’ to the bullying literature which, while
acknowledging race or religion, lacks a structural analysis of how xenophobia impacts youth
experiences. Conventional bullying literature provided insufficient frames for our analysis of the
sometimes-harmful attitudes and roles of teachers in xenophobic bullying incidents, as well as
tracing such attitudes back to larger discourses, media narratives and discriminatory policies.
Not only is the diversity among South Asian Americans rarely acknowledged, their
experiences with bullying are infrequently understood. Our work with South Asian American
communities, coupled with both academic and grey literature, suggests that xenophobic racism
experienced by these youth is different from that of other immigrant youth as it is frequently
related to the youths’ (assumed) religious backgrounds. We posit that understanding the macrolevel formation of Islamophobia enables connections to the particular discourses that circulate
and shape how youth experience bullying in schools. Schools do not exist in a vacuum, and the
intersection of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia seem to consistently be the root cause of
this kind of bullying experienced by South Asian American youth. Efforts must understand what
drives such bullying in order for it to be effectively addressed.
Although over 15 years have passed since September 11th, 2001, the repercussions felt
by South Asian, West Asian and Muslim communities in the post-9/11 aftermath remain
palpable. As these communities continue to grow, South Asian Americans face increasing
hostility and surveillance as illustrated by various reports (SAALT, 2014). For example, we
regularly hear about Islamophobic graffiti on mosques, Hindu temples and gurdwaras as well as
violent assaults in and outside of schools. All of these are rooted in a larger matrix of racialized
violence against brown bodies.
32
South Asian American organizations along with several advocates of various immigrant
justice organizations have sought to act in solidarity with other religious communities facing
extremist violence informed by their own experiences with such violence. Sikh communities
have stood with Muslims even amidst being the targets of Islamophobic violence (Young, 2016),
and also African Americans after the horrific shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church in
Charleston in 2015 (Delong & Sachs, 2015). Alicia Garza, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter
Movement, asked in an article following the Charleston Massacre, “Who taught Roof [the
confessed shooter] to hate Black people, enough to kill nine of us, in a sanctuary?” (Garza,
2015). Similarly, some of the larger questions that guide our work as scholars and practitioners
in education and that are infused into this project as well as our ongoing projects include: how
can educators who encounter racist attitudes in their classroom work to foster respect for
difference and equal rights in their school communities? How can schools be sites for
transformative learning amidst dominant narratives and structures of inequality that reproduce
racism and xenophobia? How is it possible that a child can go through the American educational
system, graduate and come out a violent white supremacist?
Our curricular resource pack, In the face of xenophobia: Lessons to address the bullying
of South Asian American youth, serves as one small intervention, an attempt to disrupt the
consequences of these structures of inequality by unsettling the assumptions people have of
South Asians in the U.S., bringing lived experiences of xenophobic bullying to the fore and
casting possibilities of new forms of empathic understanding. While certainly not a panacea, our
hope is that engaging with race in meaningful ways in the classroom, can offer transformative
learning for students and educators that can interrupt the hidden and not-so-hidden curriculum of
bias that leads to violence in and around schools. Humanizing the “Other” is the premise of
33
education for social justice, peace and human rights. By offering a window into the experience of
South Asian Americans—and the often painful manifestations of violence youth in this
community face—our goal is to encourage dialogues that increase empathy and expand notions
of belonging and citizenship for these students who increasingly attend U.S. schools.
34
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